News

June 29, 2006 - 9:18am -- autonomedia

Zapatistas Call for July, 2006 Encuentro in Venezuela

Lieutenant Colonel Moisés

Communiqué from the Intergalactic Commission of the EZLN on the Intercontinental
Encuentro

Adherents Propose a Huge Gathering in Venezuela for July

TO: The Adherents of the Zezta Internazional

FROM: Intergalactic Commission of the EZLN

Receive our greetings, compañeros, as you read this information.

First, I want to remind you how we ourselves see what has happened in the
preliminary meetings to the Intercontinental Encuentro (gathering) that we are
preparing:

The gatherings and meetings in preparation for the Intercontinental Encuentro
proposed in the Sixth Declaration from the Lacandon Jungle, were called and
organized in their entirety by the adherents to the Zezta Internazional.

June 27, 2006 - 3:33pm -- autonomedia

Lyle Stuart, Publisher of Renegade Titles, Dies at 83

Anthony Ramirez, New York Times

Lyle Stuart, a renegade journalist and publisher whose picaresque life included clashes with Walter Winchell, the publication of Naked Came the Stranger and the decision to print The Anarchist Cookbook, died on Saturday at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center in Englewood, N.J. He was 83 and lived in Fort Lee, N.J.

The cause of death was a heart attack, said his wife, Carole.

In his first career as a journalist in the 1940's and 50's, Mr. Stuart clashed with the powerful columnist Walter Winchell and supported Fidel Castro. In his second, as a publisher, he was notorious for The Anarchist Cookbook. Written by William Powell, the book, which included instructions on making bombs and homemade silencers for pistols, was first released in 1970 at the height of antiwar and anti-establishment protests. Web sites inspired by the book are still proliferating.

Mr. Stuart published the book against his own staff's wishes. "I liked it, but nobody else did — and of course no other publisher would touch it," he told an interviewer in 1978. In 2000, the author, Mr. Powell, told The Observer of London that he disavowed the book, written when he was 19; later, in an open letter on Amazon.com, he called it "a misguided product of my adolescent anger at the prospect of being drafted." But Mr. Stuart, who held the copyright, continued to publish it.

He courted controversy again in 1996 when he reissued The Turner Diaries, an anti-government novel self-published by a neo-Nazi in 1978. It is said to have been a favorite of Timothy J. McVeigh, executed for killing 169 people with a truck bomb in Oklahoma City in 1995.

June 27, 2006 - 10:40am -- autonomedia

Colorado Moves to Fire Ward Churchill

It’s possible that Ward Churchill may never again teach a class at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The interim chancellor at Boulder on Monday issued a “notice of intent to dismiss” the controversial professor, citing findings of serious and repeated research misconduct. Churchill still has appeal rights — and has 10 days to take his case to a faculty review committee. After any appeal, a final decision rests with the president of the University of Colorado System and the Board of Regents. And Churchill has vowed to sue the university to block any firing.

May 25, 2006 - 10:20am -- autonomedia

"Inequality Counts"

The Nation

Every three years since 1989, the Federal Reserve Board has prepared a
Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), which carefully measures the net worth of
all households in the nation — that is, the total assets owned by all
Americans. The survey, the most complete and thorough analysis of individual
wealth, summarizes the financial resources of different groups of the
population, such as bank accounts, stocks, bonds, business assets and real
estate. The most recent report, issued early in April 2006, details the
massive inequality of wealth in the United States between a small number of
households at the top of the income scale and those in the bottom half. This
report and other similar studies emphasize that this wealth inequality is
growing and is becoming a permanent part of our society.

The latest report examined the distribution of wealth in 2004 and makes
detailed comparisons showing the change in wealth among various population
groups. It notes the following:

The total net worth of all Americans in 1989 was $25 trillion (in 2004
dollars). Of that amount, the top 1 percent owned 30 percent, or $7.775
trillion. The bottom half owned 3 percent of the total, or $763 billion.

Fifteen years later, in 2004, the total wealth of all Americans had doubled
to $50.25 trillion. The top 1 percent of the population now owns 33.4
percent of the total, or $16.774 trillion. Their percentage share of the
total has increased by more than 3 percent in fifteen years. At the same
time, the total wealth owned by the bottom 50 percent increased to $1.278
trillion, but its percentage of total wealth declined from 3 percent to 2.5
percent in the same time period.

Thus the wealth of the top 1 percent was ten times the wealth of the bottom
50 percent in 1989. Fifteen years later, the wealth of the top 1 percent was
thirteen times the wealth of the bottom 50 percent.

May 23, 2006 - 12:56pm -- autonomedia

Tensions Flare as Caledonia Standoff Continues

Canadian Broadcasting Company News

A fragile calm has settled in but a tense standoff continues in Caledonia,
Ontario, Canada, hours after aboriginal protesters and non-native residents traded
punches and insults.
The barricade came back up after native and non-native protesters clashed.

Ontario Provincial Police officers have separated the two sides, lining up
in a pair of columns to keep them apart on Highway 6, the main road
running through the southern Ontario town.

Local officials were to hold an emergency meeting to discuss the situation.

May 17, 2006 - 6:11am -- stevphen

Churchill investigation uncovers academic misconduct

Sara Burnett and Kevin Vaughan

A University of Colorado investigative
committee found deliberate and serious misconduct by
ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill, including
plagiarism, fabrication, and "serious deviation from
accepted practices in reporting results from
research," according to a report made public today.

The committee also noted Churchill was "disrespectful
of Indian oral traditions" when he wrote the U.S.
government distributed blankets infested with smallpox
to Mandan Indians in 1837 on the Upper Missouri River.

Three of the five members of the committee said the
transgressions were serious enough that CU could
revoke Churchill’s tenure and fire him. But two of
those three said the most appropriate sanction would
be a five-year suspension without pay.

The other two committee members said they were
"troubled by the circumstances under which these
allegations have been made," and "believe his
dismissal would have an adverse effect on other
scholars’ ability to conduct their research." Those
two recommended that Churchill be suspended without
pay for two years.

May 15, 2006 - 1:43pm -- autonomedia

Alexander Zinoviev, 83, Changeable Russian Author, Dies

Douglas Martin, New York Times

Alexander Zinoviev, a philosopher turned popular author who won wide repute for his savage satires of Soviet society, only to become a surprising apologist for Communism after its demise, died in Moscow on Wednesday. He was 83.

Mr. Zinoviev emerged from a large peasant family to become an influential philosopher of logic before writing withering, surrealistic mockeries of life in Communist Russia that were compared with the works of Hobbes, Swift and Voltaire. He drew particular praise for The Yawning Heights (1976), which depicted a society dying of boredom.

May 14, 2006 - 7:55am -- stevphen

Halliburton Solves Global Warming

An advanced new technology will keep corporate managers safe even
when climate change makes life as we know it impossible.

"The SurvivaBall is designed to protect the corporate manager no
matter what Mother Nature throws his or her way," said Fred Wolf, a
Halliburton representative who spoke today at the Catastrophic Loss
conference held at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Amelia Island, Florida.
"This technology is the only rational response to abrupt climate
change," he said to an attentive and appreciative audience.

Most scientists believe global warming is certain to cause an
accelerating onslaught of hurricanes, floods, droughts, tornadoes,
etc. and that a world-destroying disaster is increasingly possible.
For example, Arctic melt has slowed the Gulf Stream by 30% in just
the last decade; if the Gulf Stream stops, Europe will suddenly
become just as cold as Alaska. Global heat and flooding events are
also increasingly possible.

In order to head off such catastrophic scenarios, scientists agree we
must reduce our carbon emissions by 70% within the next few years.
Doing that would seriously undermine corporate profits, however,
and so
a more forward-thinking solution is needed.

At today's conference, Wolf and a colleague demonstrated three
SurvivaBall mockups, and described how the units will sustainably
protect managers from natural or cultural disturbances of any
intensity or duration. The devices - looking like huge inflatable
orbs - will include sophisticated communications systems, nutrient
gathering capacities, onboard medical facilities, and a daunting
defense infrastructure to ensure that the corporate mission will not
go unfulfilled even when most human life is rendered impossible by
catastrophes or the consequent epidemics and armed conflicts.

May 10, 2006 - 12:46pm -- stevphen

German 'Robin Hoods' give poor a taste of the high life

Allan Hall

A gang of anarchist Robin Hood-style thieves, who dress as
superheroes and steal expensive food from exclusive
restaurants and delicatessens to give to the poor, are being
hunted by police in the German city of Hamburg.

The gang members seemingly take delight in injecting humour
into their raids, which rely on sheer numbers and the
confusion caused by their presence. After they plundered
Kobe beef fillets, champagne and smoked salmon from a
gourmet store on the exclusive Elbastrasse, they presented
the cashier with a bouquet of flowers before making their
getaway.

The latest robbery is part of a pattern over the past
several months, suggesting that the thieves deliberately set
out to highlight what they perceive as the inequality
inherent in German society.

However, the authorities do not agree. Bodo Franz, a police
spokesman, said: “They get off feeling they are just like
Robin Hood. There are about 30 in the group. But whatever
their motives, they are thieves, plain and simple.”

May 3, 2006 - 8:06pm -- autonomedia

"Even Death if it's Necessary" The Other Campaign's Challenge to the Rich and Powerful

Hermann Bellinghausen y Emir Olivares

Mexico City, May 1, 2006. — "Even death if it's necessary," is the phrase which Subcomandante Marcos has heard the most in the south and center of the country, expressed by groups most below to repudiate neoliberalism: indigenous, women, campesinos, small business people, workers, children, elders, students, exploited workers. "Even death if it's necessary" was the phrase with which the Zapatista delegate returned, after five years, to the heart of Mexico. Which is the same that he heard in Chiapas before 1994, "when women, men, children and old ones decided to rise up in arms against the supreme government" he recalled, in reference to the Zapatista villages in whose name he arrived here for the commemoration of the "other" May 1st.